LITMIR.BIZ

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our way!”

      “I could have sworn you had only one glass of champagne, Luci.” Clarissa turned to investigate the phenomenon who had made the most poised twenty-two-year-old woman she knew flutter like a giddy schoolgirl. “I’ll have to see if someone’s spiking the…”

      The words backed up in her throat.

      There were so many men in the ballroom whom Clarissa didn’t recognize. She’d been away for so long and had never been active in court life, and she was the one member of the king’s family who everyone almost forgot existed, just the way she wanted them to. But there could be only one man who warranted Luci’s overreaction.

      There was only one man who Clarissa could see.

      He wasn’t a god. He surpassed all depictions of gods she’d ever seen, with all the perfections worshippers’ imaginations had lavished on them. No one could have imagined him. She certainly hadn’t. She could barely believe he was real.

      He was. And he was looking their way. Her way.

      Her heart plunged into the pit of her stomach. Time ceased. Reality fell away. Existence converged onto one thing. His eyes. Stormy skies illuminated by lightning, all their focus and power targeting her. But what started tremors arcing through her was what she saw in them; a reflection of her own state, stunned free fall into the awareness that crackled between them.

      Suddenly he blinked, turned his face away. Through the fugue encompassing her, she realized why he had severed their connection. Her father.

      King Benedetto had appeared beside the man, a wide smile—one she couldn’t remember seeing since she was a small child—spreading across his lips.

      The man gazed at her father as if he didn’t recognize him. Her father spoke, the man listened. She found herself moving, unaware of anything or anyone, just needing to be closer, to find out what had just happened. Suddenly the man turned back, snared her again in the bull’s eye of his focus.

      She stopped. Moving. Breathing. Her heart quivered inside her to a standstill. Shock splashed through her like ice water.

      It was unmistakable, what she saw in his eyes now. Coldness. Hostility. Which meant one thing. She’d been wrong. It hadn’t been a blast of attraction she’d seen in his eyes, felt radiating from him. That had all been on her side.

      Before she could recoil from the rush of mortification and letdown, he turned and walked away from her father.

      She stood there, feeling as if a knife had been thrust between her ribs, heard Luci’s voice as if it were seeping in from another realm.

      “Lord, what was that?”

      Clarissa couldn’t produce a thought, let alone an answer.

      “That was the Savage Iron Man.”

      Clarissa swung around unsteadily toward the purring voice.

      Stella. She’d been making Clarissa’s skin crawl ever since they were children. Thankfully, they were only third cousins, so she’d seen as little of Stella as possible. She would have liked to see far less. None.

      Stella’s words made as much sense now.

      It was Luci who summed up Clarissa’s thoughts: “Huh?”

      “Ferruccio Selvaggio, shipping magnate extraordinaire, who, at thirty-two, is one of the richest men in the world. He’s like a wrecking ball, rising so high so young, over the smashed remains of anyone who’s dared stand in his way. Hence the nickname, which also happens to be the meaning of his aptly given names.”

      “That’s according to you, of course.” Luci smirked.

      “That’s according to common knowledge. He’s a terror. But judging by our king’s enthusiasm, it seems he’s willing to overlook that fact—along with the other fact, that Ferruccio is a bastard, literally—if he’ll only invest heavily enough in Castaldini.”

      “My, Stella, I hope nobody thinks you’re the example of what royal blood does for a person,” Luci said. “It would be so unfair if you gave us all a reputation for being stuck-up bitches.”

      Stella pouted. The perfect beauty was always putting on an act, oozing class and subtle sexuality, showing her true self only to other women, knowing men would think them jealous harpies if they criticized her. “Being a mongrel yourself, Luciana, you don’t have to worry about that. But then, that makes you the perfect merchandise he’s here to shop for. You have enough diluted blue blood that you might fit the bill in his bid to buy legitimacy. With what he has to offer in return, I say go for it.”

      As Luci continued to argue with Stella, Clarissa turned and walked away. Stella’s vile words were like acid poured over the rawness of that incendiary moment. It didn’t matter that it had all been in her mind. The damage was real.

      She’d moved a good way through the crowd when something made her turn around.

      He was heading toward where she’d been standing. Coming back for her? Had she been wrong about that second look? She began walking back.

      Her feet gathered momentum as he zeroed in on Luciana and Stella. Would he ask them about her?

      Then she was close enough to see the glazed look entering the women’s eyes at being under his immediate influence, to hear the rumble of his deep voice, the predatory flirtation in it.

      Something shriveled inside her, like a paper curling up as flames ate it to ashes. Her feet changed course again, quickened, until she was almost running as she exited the ballroom to the verandah. She breathed hard, snatching air into constricted lungs.

      Stop it. You fool.

      She’d imagined it all. The attraction and the antipathy. He’d been looking at Luciana all along. Or perhaps he looked at every woman the way she’d thought he’d looked at her.

      Get ahold of yourself.

      She slipped into the shadows, trying to do just that, to suppress tears she’d long thought had run dry.

      She was a lousy excuse for a princess, but her father had asked her to take an active role in the court and in the kingdom, at his side, in her mother’s place. It had been the first thing he’d asked of her in…ever. She was damned if she’d run out on him. Again.

      She straightened her aching back, started to move—and walked into a wall of hot, hard muscle and maleness. Him.

      She stumbled back, started to apologize, to sidestep him, air shearing into her lungs, chaos invading her synapses.

      He blocked her escape route. He didn’t touch her—he didn’t need to. His very presence reached out and snared her in an inescapable embrace. And that was before her gaze streaked up to his, to find him looking down at her with that trance-inducing intensity.

      The effect was the same as it had been during that first flash flood of recognition.

      Her consciousness wavered. The world swirled around her as his eyes ate her up. Then his lips moved and she heard his voice, unobscured by the din of background chatter and music. Rich and fathomless, sweeping over her like a binding spell.

      “I’m leaving. And you’re not enjoying this reception any more than I am. Come with me.”

      She stared up at him. No one should be endowed with all that. He was too…everything. He towered about ten inches above her five foot eight, his physique that of an Olympian, his face that of an avenging angel, planes and hollows and slashes of power and perfection, a being of bronze and gold and steel, who took her breath away and held it just out of reach.

      Dangerous. And if he could do this to her with a look, he was beyond that. Lethal. But that wasn’t just a look in his eyes. That was…unadulterated coveting. Pure possession.

      It was what she’d imagined she’d seen before. But she hadn’t imagined the cold way he’d looked at her afterward, or the way he’d

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